Minimum

# Minimum — AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER

The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER pairing delivers a thoroughly capable experience in Minimum, a 2014 third-person shooter that remains sensitive to both CPU and GPU scaling. Across the full range of resolutions and settings tested, this combo produces frame rates from 56 FPS at 4K Ultra to 329 FPS at 1080p Low, demonstrating a wide performance envelope that shifts bottleneck behavior as resolution rises. The data indicates a system that is overwhelmingly GPU-limited at 4K but becomes increasingly CPU-bound at 1080p, where the 9800X3D's strong single-thread performance helps push frame rates well past 200 FPS.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate progression from 1080p to 4K reveals a classic resolution-scaling curve, with the GPU taking on progressively more work as pixel count increases. At High settings, the average FPS drops from 211 at 1920x1080 to 136 at 2560x1440, then to 73 at 3840x2160. That represents a 35.5% performance loss when moving from 1080p to 1440p, and a further 46.3% loss from 1440p to 4K. The total drop from 1080p High to 4K High is 65.4%, which is a substantial reduction that points squarely at the graphics card as the limiting factor at higher resolutions.

Low settings tell a similar story but with even more dramatic scaling. The 9800X3D and RTX 4070 Ti SUPER combination produces 329 FPS at 1080p Low, dropping to 212 FPS at 1440p Low, and then to 114 FPS at 4K Low. The 1080p-to-1440p reduction is 35.6%, nearly identical to the High settings drop, but the 1440p-to-4K reduction is 46.2%, again closely matching the High settings trend. This consistency across settings suggests that the scaling behavior is governed primarily by resolution rather than by the quality preset.

The Medium settings data, which includes min and max FPS values, offers additional insight. At 4K Medium, the average is 87 FPS with a minimum of 74 and maximum of 101, while at 1440p Medium the average reaches 162 FPS with a range of 138 to 187. At 1080p Medium, the average climbs to 252 FPS with a spread from 214 to 290. The gap between min and max FPS narrows as resolution drops, from 27 FPS at 4K to 49 FPS at 1440p and 76 FPS at 1080p, indicating that frame time consistency improves at higher resolutions where the GPU is more uniformly saturated.

Ultra settings produce the lowest frame rates across the board, with 161 FPS at 1080p, 104 FPS at 1440p, and 56 FPS at 4K. The scaling from 1080p to 1440p here is a 35.4% drop, and from 1440p to 4K a 46.2% drop — again matching the pattern seen in other settings. This consistency strongly suggests that the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER's rendering throughput scales predictably with pixel count, and that the CPU is not introducing variable bottlenecks across different quality presets.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture and features 16 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus, delivering 672.3 GB/s of memory bandwidth. The GPU's boost clock is rated at 2610 MHz, with a base clock of 2340 MHz. These specifications position the card as a high-end 40-series offering, and the benchmark data reflects that positioning: the GPU scores 31,811 in PassMark G3D and 5,569 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, placing it in the 76th percentile among all GPUs.

In Minimum, the GPU's role becomes dominant as resolution increases. The fact that frame rates at 4K Ultra (56 FPS) are less than half of those at 1080p Ultra (161 FPS) indicates that the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER is fully engaged at 4K, with pixel throughput being the primary constraint. The 16 GB VRAM capacity is more than sufficient for this title, even at 4K with Ultra settings, so memory capacity is not a limiting factor in these results.

The GPU's nearest rivals in aggregate benchmark scores include the NVIDIA Quadro M5000, GRID M60-1Q, RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell, and TITAN RTX, with score deltas ranging from -0.4% to -1.9%. This places the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER in a tight cluster of similarly-performing cards, although none of those rivals are tested in Minimum specifically. In this game, the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER's 44.10 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 250.6 GPixel/s pixel rate are the specifications most relevant to the observed 4K performance, where the card sustains 73 FPS at High settings and 87 FPS at Medium.

The transition from 1440p to 4K shows the GPU becoming the clear bottleneck. At 1440p High, the system produces 136 FPS, but at 4K High, it drops to 73 FPS — a halving of performance that cannot be explained by CPU limitations. The 9800X3D is more than capable of feeding frames at these rates, as evidenced by the 1080p results where the same CPU pushes 211 FPS at High settings. This asymmetry confirms that the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER is the limiting component at 4K, while the CPU takes over that role at lower resolutions.

CPU Role

The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is an 8-core, 16-thread processor from the 9000 series, built on the Zen 5 architecture with a 4 nm process. It operates with a base clock of 4.70 GHz and a boost clock of 5.20 GHz, and it carries 96 MB of shared L3 cache. The CPU's benchmark results are strong across the board: it scores 23,230 in Cinebench R23 multi-core, 2,080 in single-core, and 18,696 in Geekbench multi-core. Its PassMark multi-thread score of 40,009 and single-thread score of 4,430 place it in the 87th percentile among all CPUs.

In Minimum, the CPU's influence is most visible at 1080p, where frame rates reach 329 FPS at Low settings. That figure is more than double the 4K Low result of 114 FPS, and it approaches the kind of frame rates that suggest CPU-side limits are beginning to emerge. The 9800X3D's single-thread performance, as measured by its 1,212 score in 3DMark single-thread and 328 in Cinebench R15 single-core, is what enables these high frame rates in a game that likely relies on a few primary threads.

The CPU's nearest rivals in aggregate benchmark scores include the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 8840HS, Ryzen AI 9 365, Ryzen AI 7 450, and Ryzen 7 7700, with deltas ranging from -0.8% to +0.7%. The 9800X3D's average benchmark score of 39,768 is nearly identical to these competitors, yet in Minimum the 9800X3D's high clock speeds and large cache appear to translate into strong gaming performance, particularly at 1080p where the CPU has more headroom to influence results.

The data shows that the CPU's role diminishes as resolution increases. At 1080p Low, the system produces 329 FPS, a figure that likely approaches the CPU's frame delivery ceiling for this title. At 1440p Low, the result drops to 212 FPS, and at 4K Low to 114 FPS — reductions that align more with GPU workload than CPU capability. The 9800X3D's 8 cores and 16 threads are not fully exercised by Minimum, which is a 2014 title, but the processor's high boost clock of 5.20 GHz ensures that even lightly-threaded workloads receive maximum single-thread throughput.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data covers three resolutions and four settings levels, with the most complete data available at Medium settings where both minimum and maximum FPS are recorded. At 1920x1080, the results range from 329 FPS at Low to 161 FPS at Ultra, with High at 211 FPS and Medium at 252 FPS (minimum 214, maximum 290). The 1080p results demonstrate that this combo is capable of exceptionally high frame rates, particularly at lower settings where the CPU's performance ceiling becomes the relevant factor.

At 2560x1440, the frame rates step down proportionally: 212 FPS at Low, 162 FPS at Medium (minimum 138, maximum 187), 136 FPS at High, and 104 FPS at Ultra. The 1440p results show a more balanced distribution, with the gap between Low and Ultra settings narrowing to 108 FPS compared to 168 FPS at 1080p. This suggests that at 1440p, both CPU and GPU are contributing to the overall performance, whereas at 1080p the CPU dominates and at 4K the GPU dominates.

At 3840x2160, the results are 114 FPS at Low, 87 FPS at Medium (minimum 74, maximum 101), 73 FPS at High, and 56 FPS at Ultra. The 4K results show the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER working at its limit, particularly at Ultra settings where the frame rate falls below 60 FPS. Even at 4K Low, the 114 FPS result indicates that the GPU still has significant headroom when the quality preset is reduced, but the Ultra setting at 56 FPS confirms that the card is the primary constraint at this resolution.

The Medium settings data provides the only min/max FPS information in the dataset, and it reveals interesting consistency patterns. At 1080p Medium, the min-to-max spread is 76 FPS (214 to 290), at 1440p Medium it is 49 FPS (138 to 187), and at 4K Medium it is 27 FPS (74 to 101). This narrowing spread at higher resolutions suggests that frame pacing becomes more consistent when the GPU is more heavily loaded, likely because the CPU has ample time to prepare frames ahead of the GPU's rendering pace.

How This Combo Ranks

The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER combination ranks 449th out of 3,712 tested combos in Minimum, placing it in the top 12.1% of all configurations in the database. This ranking reflects the combination's strong overall performance, though it is notable that the rank is not higher given the premium nature of both components. The ranking suggests that many other combos, likely featuring more powerful GPUs, achieve higher frame rates in this title at the resolutions tested.

The combo's rank relative to its position in the aggregate CPU and GPU percentile rankings is informative. The CPU sits in the 87th percentile among all CPUs, and the GPU in the 76th percentile among all GPUs, yet the combo ranks in the 87.9th percentile among combos (449 out of 3,712). The fact that the combo outperforms its individual component percentiles indicates that the pairing is well-matched for this game, with the CPU's strength compensating for the GPU's somewhat lower relative standing.

The ranking data, combined with the measured FPS figures, suggests that this combo is particularly well-suited to high-refresh-rate 1080p and 1440p gaming. At 1080p Low, the 329 FPS result is competitive with much more expensive GPU configurations, and at 1440p High, the 136 FPS result provides a smooth experience on high-refresh monitors. At 4K, the combo is less competitive, with the 56 FPS Ultra result falling below the 60 FPS threshold that many players consider the minimum for smooth gameplay. Players targeting 4K Ultra in Minimum would likely need a more powerful GPU to achieve higher frame rates, while those playing at 1080p or 1440p will find this combo thoroughly capable.

FAQ

*Q: What is the best resolution to run Minimum with this combo for high refresh rates?*

A: At 1080p, the combo produces 211 FPS at High settings and 329 FPS at Low, making it ideal for 144Hz or even 240Hz monitors. At 1440p, it still delivers 136 FPS at High and 212 FPS at Low, which remains suitable for high-refresh displays.

*Q: Can this combo handle 4K gaming in Minimum?*

A: Yes, but with caveats. At 4K High, the average FPS is 73, and at 4K Ultra it drops to 56. Players who prioritize frame rates should use Medium settings, which yield 87 FPS at 4K.

Q: How does the CPU affect performance at different resolutions?

A: The Ryzen 7 9800X3D's impact is greatest at 1080p, where frame rates reach 329 FPS at Low settings. As resolution increases to 1440p and 4K, the GPU becomes the limiting factor, and the CPU's influence diminishes accordingly.

Q: What is the frame time consistency at Medium settings?

A: At 1080p Medium, the minimum FPS is 214 and maximum is 290, a spread of 76 FPS. At 1440p Medium, the range narrows to 138-187 FPS, and at 4K Medium it tightens further to 74-101 FPS, indicating more consistent frame pacing at higher resolutions.

*Q: How does this combo rank among all tested configurations in Minimum?*

A: It ranks 449th out of 3,712 tested combos, placing it in the top 12.1% of all configurations. This is higher than the individual component percentiles would suggest, indicating a well-matched pairing for this game.

*Q: Is the 16 GB VRAM sufficient for Minimum at 4K?*

A: Yes. The RTX 4070 Ti SUPER's 16 GB of GDDR6X memory is more than adequate for this 2014 title, even at 4K Ultra settings. The memory bandwidth of 672.3 GB/s also ensures that texture streaming is not a bottleneck at any resolution or setting.